IHE Accessibility in OER Implementation Guide
Overview
In this section, you and your team will engage in a Landscape Analysis to uncover key structures and supports that can guide your work to support Accessibility in OER. You may or may not answer all of these questions, but this is an offering.
May 11 - Section One: Landscape Analysis for Accessibility in OER in Local Context (Work on during May 11th implementation)
In this section, you and your team will engage in a Landscape Analysis to uncover key structures and supports that can guide your work to support Accessibility in OER. We exnourage to explore some of the questions from each category. You may or may not answer all of these questions, but this is an offering. We ask that you complete Parts One, Two and Six.
Part One: Initial Thoughts
What is your team's initial goal for this series?
- Continue with our development of short courses/module on how to format for accessible online design, specifically on Pressbooks.
- Present available resources to faculty and staff through the Center for Faculty Excellence meetings, in online meetings with our authors of OER (Textbook Affordability Grant winners), and email to past recipients of our Textbook Affordability Grant and other past authors of OER at CSU.
Part Two: Introductory probing questions:
What does accessibility look like in our organization? How do we measure accessibility?
What does OER look like in our organization? How do we measure access to OER?
CSU Center for eLearning currently has the following professional development courses for faculty and staff that introduce them to accessibility and goes over document accessibility in Word and PowerPoint: Creating Accessible Word Documents, Creating Accessible PowerPoint Presentations, Blackboard Ally for Creating Accessible Documents. We also have various video tutorials on how to format for accessibility in Pressbook assignments for a history course and a course titled Open Pedagogy and Pressbooks. The later tutorials are specific to assignments, but the techniques could be pulled out for a general audience.
Our Office of Disability Services measures accessibility and gives feedback to faculty on what they need to do to make their course content accessible to students with disabilities in their course. Our Scholarly Publications director reviews content authored by faculty in Pressbooks and either applies formatting for accessibility herself and/or asks faculty authors to help. Heather Caprette in the Center for eLearning can check the accessibility of content and make recommendations. She also authors with accessible formatting when creating course materials.
Part Three: Clarifying questions for accessibility:
What is the organizational structure that supports accessibility?
We Have - Courses on Word accessibility
We Have - Courses on PPT accessibility
We Have – Best practices in accessible learning courses
Need – Accessibility in Pressbooks course
Need - New authors need to review the relevant modules in a course titled Accessible Design Techniques for Authors of Open Educational Resources, depending on the authoring tool/s they are using.
- Who generates most of the accessibility structures/conversation in our organization?
The Office of Disability Services, The Center for eLearning, the Director of Scholarly Publications in the library.
Where do most educators get support with accessibility?
ODS
ELearning
What content areas might have the largest gaps in access to accessibility?
It varies. It could be any and all areas. As an example, we don’t have the resources to pay for captioning for all recorded videos within courses. This is paid for by the Office of Disability Services when there is a student with a documented disability who needs captioning in a course.
Part Four: Clarifying questions for OER:
What is our organizational structure that supports curricular resources?
The Center for eLearning, and sometimes the library
What is our organizational structure that supports OER?
The library primarily, and sometimes the Center for eLearning
Who generates most of the curricular resources in our organization?
Faculty
Where do most educators get support with curricular resources?
They mainly author them because of the vast quantity of resources that are created. They receive some help from the Center for eLearning. They also rely on paid publisher content a great deal. This could be in the form of course packages, and/or library subscriptions to ebooks and journals. When they create OER in Pressbooks, they get a team of staff helping them/ providing guidance from the library and Center for eLearning.
What content areas might have the largest gaps in access to curricular resources/OER?
There are and could be gaps in accessibility in any of our course materials no matter who was the author or the source.
Part Five: Clarifying questions for Faculty learning and engagement:
What Professional Learning (PL) structures have the best participation rates for our educators?
It varies over time. In the past, faculty have attended Center for Faculty Excellence lunch talks and learning communities, face-to-face before the pandemic began and online when the vaccines were being developed and distributed. Since our return to face-to-face, it seems that attendance in person is less than before March of 2020. Participation in the Center for eLearning online workshop courses varies also. It could range from 2 to 20 participants per short course.
What PL structures have the best "production" rates for our educators?
What incentive do we have to offer people for participating in learning and engagement?
The Center for eLearning gives a $500 stipend to faculty who successfully complete our Faculty Online Teaching and Design course. They also give $500 to faculty who successfully complete three or more FOTD and Beyond short workshops within a year. The Center for Teaching Excellence awards stipends for Teaching Enhancement Awards for faculty to improve their courses over a two-year period. The library offers Textbook Affordability Grants to faculty for authoring OER.
Who are the educators that would be most creative with accessibility and OER?
Those who have the time to review the accessibility training and learn how to use Pressbooks.
Who are the educators that would benefit the most from accessibility and OER?
The authors of the OER, no matter what platform they are using. Anyone creating content they are placing online for courses.
Part Six: Final Probing questions:
What is our current goal for Accessibility in OER and why is that our goal?
To build a module on accessible formatting in Pressbooks because we don’t have on-demand training for this yet. To reach out to faculty who are currently authoring and have authored in the past. By reaching out to current authors, we can maximize the potential that OER created going forward are more accessible. By reaching out to past authors, we are hoping that they will find the time and be willing to implement the formatting for accessibility.
Who have we not yet included while thinking about this work?
Possibly offering the accessibility training to staff. In the past, The Center for eLearning asked all instructional designers and online course & materials developers to take a Best Practices in Accessible Online Design course, but several did not complete it.
What barriers remain when considering this work?
Time is always a limitation for everyone since universities have downsized their staffing. Attitude is another. Everyone needs to realize that formatting for accessibility is everyone’s responsibility, not just the task of several people at the institution.
What would genuine change look like for our organization for this work?
More resources to be given to accessibility efforts across the university, whether this be time off for training, stipends to encourage professional development, or requirements to take accessibility training.
Section Two: Team Focus (Finish before May 25th to share during Implementation Session Two)
Identifying and Describing a Problem of Practice
The following questions should help your team ensure that you are focusing your collaboration.
What is your Team’s specific goal for this series? You may consider using AEM Quality Indicators for Creating Accessible Materials to help add to or narrow your work.
Require that Textbook Affordability Grant recipients whose work involves the creation of new content (not just adoption) complete one or more modules of a Blackboard course titled Accessible Design Techniques for Authors of Open Educational Resources.
Offer a training session about accessibility in OER creation/adaptation in partnership with the Center for Faculty Excellence
What other partners might support this work?
Barb Loomis in the library (so we invited her – welcome, Barb!)
Open Access and Affordability Team in the library?
Disability Services?
What is your desired timeframe for this work?
Hoping to finish by Fall 2023 in time to require as part of the library's Fall 2023 Textbook Affordability Grants
How will you include diverse voices and experiences in this work?
Diversity of roles on the team (faculty, instructional designer, library staff, etc.)
Section Three: Team Work Time and Next Steps (Complete by the end of Implementation Session Three)
Sharing and Next Steps
What was your redefined goal for this series?
See Implementation Section Two
What does your team want to celebrate?
A great plan!
The addition of Barb to our work
What did your team accomplish? If you have links to resources, please include them here.
A plan and agreement to divvy up the work
What are your team’s next steps?
First planning meeting for starting the creation process scheduled for June 16th